Well, turn with me if you will,
we're gonna start. First place we'll be reading this morning
is Matthew chapter 24. Matthew chapter 24. Last week we ended our time of
study looking at those who preach and teach an anti-grace or an
anti-gospel message and what their attributes are, usually
the things that they say. And if you remember, we talked
that there are those teachers who say they believe in grace
or they teach grace, but yet they preach in all these different
extremes. They either preach lawlessness or they'll preach
law. And a lot of them will have things to say about grace that
is not according to the scripture. And that kind of got me thinking
a little bit this week about how much counterfeits that there
are today. And not just today, there's always
been counterfeits. The Lord even, and as we'll read
here, warned us of counterfeits. And I believe that not only was
it true for His time, but it's been true for the churches as
they've dealt with these things for all times. So I thought today
we might look at, because I kind of did a little study on these
things through the scriptures, the different kinds of counterfeits
that we find in scripture. And it was actually pretty eye-opening,
all the warnings about counterfeits. And I say that because a lot
of times we'll preach as preachers and teachers, we'll expound the
word of God verse by verse, but every now and then we'll get
on some things and we'll deal with topics that especially are
dealing with things that are going on in our culture, or in
our age, during our time, things that's going on that we have
to deal with, to teach on, to expound upon, and what the Bible
says about these things. And so there are certain topics
that we'll hit occasionally. and give the truth about them,
because a lot of lies are being told about them. Especially whenever
you listen to a lot of radio preachers and TV preachers, there's
a lot of lies that are being told about what God's Word says. And so, this morning I thought
we might look at this biblical understanding or biblical warnings
about things that are counterfeit. Now I think we all know what
the word counterfeit means, right? Something that is not real. uh... something that's an imitation
of something else uh... that kinda looks like it but
not i don't know if all you guys have been following the news,
Lori was reading to me something off of her uh... news that comes
across her phone a couple days ago about here in Joplin that
uh... all these uh... counterfeit hundred
dollar bills are circulating and they've picked up a whole
bunch of uh... counterfeit bills well these bills are imitations
they're not real hundred dollar bills They're look-alikes. They
look like the real thing, but they're actually not. I can't
remember, how many have they already picked up? 50? Yeah,
like 50 $100 bills that they've found across town. So be careful
whenever you go cash your money in. You might be getting counterfeit
bills. Excuse me. But anyway, that's
what counterfeit is. It's something that is an imitation
or a look-alike of the real thing and a counterfeit for the most part is intended
to be Counterfeit, you know, whenever somebody makes a counterfeit
bill He didn't do that to say I just want to add more real
currency to the know He's trying to get rich quick and he's trying
to have money that he didn't earn And so he prints his own
money and you know to buy whatever he wants to buy. Okay, so it
was an intended thing but there can be counterfeits or there
can be imitations and sometimes a The person who is a counterfeit
or the message that may be counterfeit, they may be so deceived that
they don't know what they're preaching or that they themselves
are counterfeit. But the children of grace, God
has given spiritual discernment. If you remember in, you don't
need to turn there, but let me just quickly turn over to 1 Corinthians
2. In 1 Corinthians 2, In verse 12 it says, now we have
received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is
of God, that we might know the things that are freely given
to us of God, which things also we speak not in the words which
man's wisdom teach, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing
spiritual things with spiritual. So one of the things whenever
we receive the spirit of God is we receive the spirit that
we might know the things freely given to us of God. And I would
say that would be The gospel, we'd know the gospel. We'd know
that we've been given free, imputed righteousness because of Christ.
But it also says here that we have been given the Holy Spirit
so that we might know not the words that men teach, but that
we might know the wisdom that comes from God and are able to
compare spiritual things With spiritual teaching says but the
natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God for
the foolishness unto him Neither can he know them because they're
spiritually discern So that tells me that the one who has the Spirit
of God is able to make spiritual discernments Okay, so can we
be deceived as children of grace? Yes, we can, but the Spirit will
ultimately lead us into the truth and give us the spiritual discernment
as we go to God's Word. That's why it's so important
that we stay in God's Word, we study God's Word, we read God's
Word, because if we don't even go there, You know, if we don't
even go to God's word and read and know what it says in there,
then the spirit, you know, the spirit is always going to testify
to those things that's been revealed to us in God's word. Can the
spirit bring thoughts to us without having this right here? I think
the spirit can and it has in times past. And I believe that
the spirit has given me things to say sometimes that I've not
necessarily studied out, has given me thoughts in my head
about, and I'm not saying mysticism and junk like this. I'm talking
about the spirit has revealed to me a truth and has given me
a conviction that this is what seems right. And then the word
of God confirms that The Holy Spirit is never gonna bring to
you something that can't be confirmed in the Word of God. If it can't
be confirmed in the Word of God, you better think that that's
a spirit of something else, okay? If it can't be confirmed in the
Word of God, so yes, does the Spirit speak to us and teach
us things before we know them rightly from the Scriptures?
I believe it can, but if we can't ultimately go to the Scriptures
and find that and confirm that in the Scriptures, then we better
be very careful about that, and if not, necessarily, You know,
denying that, we at least need to not be dogmatic about that.
So we need to have confirmation from God's word, because God's
word will always bring us to the truth. The Holy Spirit will
always be telling us the truth. It's not going to tell us something
contrary to this. And as we look at this issue
of counterfeit, we especially are going to find that we see
a lot of men and women teaching on TV preaching on on radio that
are saying a lot of things that are contrary to the Word of God,
but they're telling you to just trust them because the Spirit
told them that. Again, if the Spirit tells anybody
anything contrary or not confirmed by the Word of God, you need
to suspect that. But anyway, he says, but the natural man
receives these things, but doesn't receive because they're spiritually
certain. But it says, but he that is spiritual judges all
things. Now, that's a statement of fact,
isn't it? Okay? That's a statement of fact. A person who has been born again,
who has the Spirit of God in them, has been given spiritual
discernment, but has also been given to judge all things. They're just not gonna be quick
to jump on this, jump on that, believe this, believe that. They're
gonna judge all things. Now, what are they gonna judge
all things according to? Word of God, right? They're going
to judge all things according to the revealed word of God. And so, you know, we've talked
about this before. We've, there's a lot of topics
and, and, and doctrines and subjects in scripture that, you know,
sometimes whenever we bring that up to people, the first thing
is, ah, I don't believe that, you know, that's crazy. Or, you
know, you're, you're, you know, you're a weirdo or whatever.
and they don't consider a matter first before they make a judgment
upon it. But the Spirit says, or the Scriptures
say, that we should judge all things, that we should consider
a matter, and according to what the Scripture says, before we
make a judgment on that. So in all things we should make
a judgment, and it should be a right judgment, it should be
one that is governed by God's word. He says, but he that is
spiritual judgeth all things, Yet he himself is judged of no
man, for who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct
him? But we have the mind of Christ. So we've been given the
mind of Christ, and so we've been given the ability to spiritually
discern to know whether something is imitating or not imitating,
or is the truth, if something is fake or whether something
is true. If something is false or something
is not false, okay? We've been given that spiritual
discernment. The problem is, brethren, is we live in a society
and an age today where we are so fast food oriented. We are
so, information, oh man, I got this phone. If you wanna know
anything, boom, two seconds, I can Google that. I have the
information at my fingers. I have it right then and right
there. If I want to buy something, boom, I get my phone out, I can
buy it right now. I don't have to even go to the store. I can
buy it, have it delivered right to my doorstep and never leave
my house. I can have it delivered next day. I don't even have to
wait very long. Matter of fact, the technology
is coming out now where, and we live kind of close enough
to Amazon where they can fly that to you in one day by a drone
and drop it off on your doorstep. I mean, we're getting to the
place where we don't have to wait for nothing. We don't have
to think of nothing. We don't have to do anything.
Everything is just fed to us. And we live in an age of mass
understanding and mass knowledge, and people have all this stuff.
But remember, somebody is writing all this information. Somebody
is putting all this information out. Somebody is giving you all
this information, and sometimes that information isn't always
necessarily true. But we live in such an age where
we just want it like that. We don't want to stop and take
time to, you know, that brother brought something up that I never
have really thought about or heard a little bit different
than what I've been taught. The first thing we want to do
is just jump on him and say, nah, that's crazy. I don't know
what you're talking about. Now, A wise man will go and he
will study these things out. He will judge those words by
God's word and make a righteous judgment according to God's word. And so whenever we come up with
this notion that it's just not worth our time to even consider
a thing, that that's so crazy and so far-fetched, you know,
we really ought to look at these things because, you know, Listen,
I used to say that about the sovereignty of God. I used to
say that about the atonement of Jesus Christ. Well, that's
the craziest thing I've ever heard. I've never heard that
before. And I hadn't, I've never heard that before. I'd never
heard that Jesus only died for the ones that had been given
to him by the father. It was all over the scriptures, but
I'd never heard that preached. I'd never heard that taught I'd
never read that in any books Why because I'm secluded to the
things that I like to do and read and listen to to my little
group of people But whenever that was presented to me instead
of searching the scripture to see whether these things be true
I just wrote that off because I'd never heard that and it didn't
fit my Tradition it didn't fit my Doctrine, my denomination,
it didn't fit none of that stuff, so to speak. But a wise man,
one who has been given spiritual discernment, is gonna judge all
things to see whether these things be true, and he's gonna judge
them as the Spirit leads him through the Word of God. And
so, whenever we look at counterfeits, whenever we look at these things,
the Bible warns us of things that are false, and then it tells
us the things that are true. Those things that are true, we
hold on to. We trust, we believe, we defend, we stand in. Those things that are false,
we deny, we reject, and we warn against, okay? And so, the Bible
has a lot to say about that. In Matthew chapter 24, I think
I'll start with the ultimate thing that we find, is that there
are counterfeit Christs. Now a lot of you adults have
been alive long enough to have seen over the years there are
certain men who have stepped up, who have been religious leaders,
who claim to be Christ incarnate. Just over the last year, at least
in my lifetime, and right now his name slips my mind, but there's
this guy, I believe he was somewhere down in South America or somewhere
Who professed to be Christ who had come back and he had this
great following all these people was just following him and and
supposedly, you know He was actually Jesus returned and everything. However, he passed away just
a few years ago so we found out that that was false, but We have
people that are false Christ are acting as Christ now In every
age, pretty much since 140-ish, 400-ish B.C., or A.D., we have
had a line of false Christs. We see in the Catholic Church,
they have a pope. And the pope, according to their
system, is the vicar of Christ. He is Christ on earth for them. And whenever he sits in his chair
and speaks ex cathedra, or however you say it, he is actually speaking
as God, speaking the words of God. Funny thing about that is
a lot of the words that he spoke has either come to find out has
been false, has not happened. The things that he has prophesied
does not happen. And then another Pope comes along
a few years later on down the line. He sits in the same chair
and says something that completely contradicts the first one. So
now we have a schizophrenic God who don't know what he's talking
about. So, but anyway, the Pope is supposedly Christ on earth. He's the vicar of Christ. And that is the biggest blasphemy
that could ever be. For any man to say that I am
Christ, is complete and utter blasphemy. And you're fixing
to see what, and I believe what Jesus is talking about here, Matthew 24 now, I don't want
to get into eschatology. I know everyone has different
views of eschatology I'm not a preterist. I will say that
and I'm not a dispensationalist. I will say that I Do believe
a lot of the things that Jesus talked about may talk about a
future time. I I also believe a lot of things
that Jesus was telling his people during that time was talking
about the events of the destruction of Jerusalem that was about to
take place. I believe some of the things
in Revelation were things that have already taken place. There
are some that are yet to take place. So I don't want to get
into all that, but I just want us to look here in Matthew 24.
Look with me at verse four. And I'll start at verse three.
And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came
unto him privately saying, tell us when shall these things be
and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of
the world? And Jesus answered and said unto
them, take heed that no man deceive you. Okay, so before anything
he says, he says, take heed that no man deceives you. What can we extrapolate from
that? Well, one of the things we can extrapolate from that,
if Jesus is warning his disciples to take heed that no man deceive
you, is that number one, we can be deceived. And number two,
there are deceivers out there. And number three, the deceivers
that are out there are looking to deceive the disciples. Okay,
so we need to be careful of that and take heed that no man deceive
you. Now, how can we not be deceived? How can we not be deceived? Well,
as I already mentioned, we have the Spirit of God who testifies
of the truth that has been given to us in the revelation of Jesus
Christ, God's Word, okay? But we have to read it, we have
to study it, we have to know what it says. My grandpa used
to always say, when it comes to talking about counterfeits
and things like that. And he'd always give this example,
in the government, there's people that deal with just this thing.
I mean, all they deal with is counterfeit money. And he says,
whenever they're working with counterfeits, they don't go out
and study all the fake things and learn how many fake things
are out there and what this one looks like or that one looks
like or how this one reacts to this or that. He says, they don't
do that. He says, they study the original.
they get to know the original so well that whenever a counterfeit
comes up, they know it automatically because they know the original.
And that's kinda how it is with the Word of God. If we study
and read and know and commit to memory and know the Word of
God, then it's gonna be harder for a counterfeit to deceive
us. And so when Jesus tells us to
take heed that no man deceive you, we need to know what the
scriptures say so that whenever those deceivers come to deceive
us, that we can be able to have God's word there to support and
be a foundation for us to not be deceived. So Jesus says, take
heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name,
saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. So Jesus here is
saying that there's gonna be some that come in his name and
say that I am Christ and shall deceive many. Now, I believe
that that was true for their time, especially right then. But we also see that that has
been true throughout the years since Jesus was here. And I believe
we'll be like that until he comes again, until he puts down all
false Christ. he's gonna we're gonna experience
this thing and so we need to take heed what he's saying here
there are going to be many we see the david koresh is the jim
jones we see the all these men that come and they are little
christ trying to Convince people of all this stuff and they begin
to follow them, but I think Biggest in play and especially close
to this time is the rise of the Roman Empire the rise of the
Roman Church and the institution of the Pope system that whole
entire thing fits exactly what Jesus is saying and Look at verse
24. He says, for there shall arise
false Christs and false prophets and shall show great signs and
wonders insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the
very elect. We also know that this was things
that came true during Jesus' time in the early church and
the apostles. We see Simon Magnus. We see men
that were doing things and were performing things, but it wasn't
by the power of God. It was by the power of Satan.
We see that even within the Roman system that these men that came
in, you know, they come in, took over, and what did they do? They
were false Christ. and they deceived people. They
were false prophets. The whole priest and bishop system
underneath the Pope is just a line of false prophets preaching about
and supporting the main, the Pope. And so we see this whole
system And brethren, the Baptists have, through all ages, have
always looked at the Roman system as being the Antichrist, the
Antichrist system, the beast and the false prophets all being
a part of this system. And out of this, now we've seen,
of course, there's always been pagan religions. You know, there
was Babylonian religion, even before there was Roman religion,
and Roman religion actually was fueled from Babylonian. religion,
if you have opportunity to read Brother Edward Hendry's book
that we talked about last week on Babylon, you'll see that it
all kind of stands. But whether it's that, whether
it's Hinduism, whether it's Confucius and all his stuff, Mohammed and
all his stuff, All religious systems are one false Christ. One false system is anti-Christ. And so all these religious denominations
and things like that, all these come under a false heading. It just so happens that in Christianity,
we have the Roman system. And I say Christianity, quote
unquote Christianity. We have this Roman system and
It deceives many. Many think that this is Christianity.
Many take that as the Christianity that everyone is to look at.
And if you come against that, you've come against Christianity.
I mean, you watch Fox News. Most of the people on Fox News
that tend to be religious, they're all Catholic. And so whenever
something's about Catholic, you're coming against Christianity,
you know? But listen, it's even gotten worse now where evangelicals
are running to Rome, and they're starting to hold hands with Rome.
You know, Rick Warren, he's one of the big ones right now that
is, you know, telling all of us that we need to be going and
listening to what he has to say. It's just ridiculous. There shall
arise false cries, false prophets, and shall show great signs and
wonders, insomuch that if it were possible, that it should deceive the very
elect. So we see that there are counterfeit
Christ out there and that we need to take heed that no man
deceive you. Now that verse there in verse
four, take heed that no man deceive you, I'm gonna keep going back
to that because that heading is gonna be over each thing that
we talked about. Take heed that no man deceive
you. Now the next one we see the scriptures
teach about is found in 2 Corinthians chapter 11. 2 Corinthians 11. Go with me, if you would, down
to verse 14. Or, I'm sorry, verse 13. It says, for such are false apostles,
deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles
of Christ. So here we see the Bible teaches
that there are also counterfeit apostles. Now the Bible teaches
that we had, um, that there were 12 apostles that
Jesus designated to preach to the Jews. And then there was
one apostle that was born out of due time, as Paul put it,
meaning that he wasn't one of the original apostles that was
designed and selected for the ministry among the Jews. His
was the ministry unto the Gentiles. And so we see that Paul and then
the other apostles, 12 apostles, that those were the men that
God had called to be apostles, big A, apostles. And after those
men died off, there were no more apostles. Those men had apostolic
authority given by Jesus to do certain things. They had apostolic
gift to do certain things. They had been taught directly
by Jesus himself the things that Jesus had taught. And they were
to deliver that to that first church. And then as Paul went
out to all those churches that began together whenever the gospel
spread to the Gentile nations. And so they were given a specific
task. Whenever they died, that was
it. the apostolic offices was closed. But yet now we see in
a lot of charismatic Pentecostal word of faith movements, we see
men who are claiming to be apostles of God. One of the requirements
of being an apostle is you had to have personally seen Jesus
and he had to personally give you the things to say. Now a
lot of these apostles, fake apostles that are out there have said
they've seen Jesus and he's given them direct things to say. But
we don't find anywhere in scripture that that apostolic office continued
on. All throughout history you do
not see in any of the Lord's churches where apostles were
ever talked about among the people. The only place that you hear
about a false apostle system is again within the Roman Catholic
Church. where they believe that the Pope
is this continuing apostle of God and that Peter
was the first one, and everyone succeed. There's a succession
of popes that all fall underneath that category. But yet here,
the scriptures say, for such are false apostles, deceitful
workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. So there were apostles of Christ,
but they were chosen by Christ, designated by Christ, commissioned
by Christ, and fulfilled Christ's work. And that was it. The other, all other ones are
false apostles. Now, if you look at verse 14,
15, you'll see close to that, and of course the word apostle
means a, preacher or a teacher a instructor or a or a messenger
but look we see in verse 14 and 15 he also says and no marvel
for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light therefore
it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness whose end shall be according to the works." Not
meaning that they were transformed into ministers that preached
righteousness, but they were transformed to look, act, to
be like ministers of righteousness. Meaning that they were going
to go out and talk about Jesus. They were going to go and talk
about the Bible. They were going to go and talk about the things
of quote-unquote God. And so Satan himself was transformed
into an angel of light, and it says, and his ministers. Now,
I believe that ministers that it's talking about in 15 is referring
back to those who are the false apostles in 13. So the false
apostles are teachers or ministers who preach like they're ministers
of righteousness, but are actually tools of Satan. meaning that
they have an outward skin of truth, but they're full of lies. They're deceitful. They're not
telling all the truth. They're not giving the whole
truth. They're sounding like they're true, but in the end,
what they preach is lies. And that's what that is telling.
So take heed that you be not deceived. We have a lot of people
on TV and on radio and in bookstores that claim to be ministers of
righteousness, but yet they are preaching and teaching false,
heretical gospels. And we talked about that, and
we're going to talk about that here in just a little bit also here,
but we see that that is a another gospel. What they're
preaching is another gospel. They're not preaching the gospel
of grace. Remember we talked about there's
only one gospel and that's the gospel of grace. The gospel of
sovereign grace. Not the gospel of death, burial,
and resurrection. That's part of the gospel of
grace. But the gospel that Paul preached, the gospel that the
other apostles preached was all the gospel of sovereign grace
and imputed righteousness, freely given outside of any works of
ourself with results being repentance and faith and coming and willing
and choosing and all those types of things that everyone wants
to make as the conditions for salvation. That's the gospel. And these men are ministers of
quote-unquote righteousness, but yet whose end shall be according
to their works. So we see that there is counterfeit
Christ, apostles and ministers. But brethren, we also find in
Galatians, if you want to turn over to Galatians chapter two,
we also find out that there are counterfeit Christians. Now, I bet you none of y'all
would have thought that. Probably none of us has ever seen a counterfeit
Christian. Somehow Galatians has left my
Bible. Oh, here it is. Galatians chapter
two. Look with me at verse one, and
I'm gonna read down to verse four. It says, then 14 years
after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus
with me also, and I went up by revelation and communicated unto
them that gospel which I preached among the Gentiles. And when
he says I went up by revelation, that meant that God, sent him
to go to Jerusalem to talk to these guys at Jerusalem. He said,
I went up by revelation and communicated unto them, who was at Jerusalem,
that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to
them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run
or had run in vain. So Paul had went to Jerusalem
and had told them the gospel that he'd been preaching among
the Gentiles, but it said that he went privately to them of
reputation. He probably went to the apostles
and talked to the apostles and said, listen, this is what the
Lord's given me to tell, and this is what I've been preaching.
And kind of like a lot of us, you know, sometimes whenever
we go to Bible conferences or things like that, some of the
preachers will get together and some things that we've been studying,
we'll kind of bounce that off other preachers and think, you
know, hey, am I, you know, Open for correction and rebuke here,
but also looking for is there any confirmation is other men
of God that preach and teach and study the word of God and
convey that to Congregations other places are they seeing
that talking to other Christians wherever they're at. Are you
guys seeing that? Is this something that is believed
among us? And I'm not saying that that's
our final authority by no means matter of fact Paul had already
said chapter 1 he said in verse 11 but I certify you brother
that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man for I
neither received it a man neither was I taught it but by the revelation
of Jesus Christ okay so he's saying that whenever I started
out my ministry of preaching this gospel He said, I didn't
go confer with anybody else. He said, I believe that I actually
seen Jesus. He knocked me down on the road
and then he took me into Arabia and I spent three years listening
from his lips what was to be said. And I believe that to be
very true. And I just went out and I started preaching these
things. But then he says, after 14 years, he came to Jerusalem
and basically he came and was trying to confirm, you know,
hey, this is what I've been told. And I think this just shows,
you know, Paul is human just like all of us are. You know,
Paul wasn't no superhuman person. Even though these men were apostles,
they were men just like all of us. But Paul went up to these
men and he's like, you know, All this time, I've not been
here in Jerusalem, I've been out going about teaching what
I feel has been given to me of God, what I feel is a direct
revelation from God, and let me kind of bounce this off of
some of these men who the Lord's been using here in Jerusalem
all this time from the very beginning. The men who I was actually trying
to go kill, the men who the Lord actually began to instruct before
he ever Instructed to me and entrusted this gospel to them
before he ever entrusted it to me Let me bounce these things
off of that off of them and and see and I believe that that's
what he's meaning here is that he Privately to them which were
of reputation lest by any means I should run or had run in vain
Am I not doing the right thing? Am I am I not preaching the right
thing? Am I not going the right way? it says but neither Titus
who was with me and being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.
And rightly he should not have been circumcised. and that because
of false brethren, unawares, brought in, who came in privily
to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ, that they
might bring us into bondage, to whom we gave place by subjection,
no, not for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue
with you." So we see here that Paul says that there were false
brethren who had been brought in unaware, okay? Now, how does that boil down
to us here? Well, every time that a congregation
of people begin to meet, you know, we meet here, we have a
lot of people that come and go. And a lot of times, and that's
what's our heart desire, oh, we'd love to have more people.
Not because we can put it up on a little tote board out in
our foyer, okay? We don't even have tote boards
in our foyer for those who are watching. But that don't mean
nothing. No. Why do we desire to have
more people? Well, number one, we desire people
that have been saved to have a place to come to hear the truth,
to be able to worship. But we also desire that because
whenever a body is brought together of Christ, we are able to edify
each other. There is an edification that
comes from meeting with the body of Christ. And so whenever the
body is met together here, we meet and we edify each other
and we gain encouragement, we gain help from these times. Just
like this morning, the time of private discussion that we had
before we started. It was an edification, why? Because we're
hearing of the trials and the hardships and the difficulties
and the things that we are going through with each other and hey
that brother has the same thing and how did the lord bring him
through that that encourages me that the lord is mighty to
bring me through that if he so wills to do and so we have this
edification we also have this time to be accountable to each
other you know I'm accountable to you, you're accountable to
me. Whether it be about sin or whether it be about the preaching
and the doctrine and the truth that we proclaim. We have that
accountability and so there is this blessedness of coming together. And so, sometimes when people
come in, we're so wanting to accept them because, yes, we
love, you know, we know, we ourselves have been out in the wilderness
for a long time desiring for fellowship. And when we came
upon somebody preaching the truth, oh, how we wanted to be a part
of that. And so we come in. And a lot of times we, because
we can't see the heart, we don't know what's truly there or not.
All we can see is the outward appearances. We see somebody
who seems to be a believer in Christ. And so we will bring
them into the fellowship. We'll extend right hand of fellowship
with them. We'll commune with them. We'll eat at the table
with them. We'll share the Word with them. All these things and
then find out maybe on down the line that they really weren't
converted. They really weren't of God. Now,
we'll never know that till the end, but we don't know that. And we find them to be false
professors. Whenever challenged or held to
the word of God, whenever rebuked over their sin and things like
that, they begin to rebel and refuse and reject the things
of scriptures. Then we find out, see, that's
where we make mistakes. Now, God don't make mistakes.
He brings in everyone of his people, but we might make mistakes. And so yes, there's going to
be some tears that come in to the fellowship among the wheat.
And so it's, it's, as time goes by, as God has decreed out and
has planned out and by providence works out, those tears come in
for a reason. Those tears come in. Matter of
fact, the Bible even says that it was designed by God that heresies
must be preached among us so that it might show forth those
who truly believe and those who don't. See, sometimes we wanna
say, well, you know, we're just gonna keep anybody out that might
look. No, listen, sometimes it's good to have somebody to come
in and to challenge with something like that because that gets you.
I've learned more of the scriptures by men who have been preaching
and teaching false things because it's got me to studying. Being
challenged about what I believe has caused me to be more avid
in the word of God to search these things. And some of them
may say something that may sound, hey, that sounds actually pretty
good. And then whenever I go to study it out, then I find,
ah, it sounds good if you keep it in that context, but if you
open it up to the context of everything else, it don't work.
And then I have to reject it. And so now the scriptures, the
Lord has saved me from error because of someone who was preaching
error. So that's why the Lord told them to leave the tares
and the wheats together. They'll be separated. There's
gonna be a time of separation. But right now, you don't know
who's who, and you might tear up wheat when you tear up the
tares. So we need to be careful of that.
Now that doesn't mean that we don't have church discipline.
Somebody comes in here and is living inappropriately, or is
acting inappropriately, or bringing division, divisiveness, contention,
and all these things that the scriptures warn us about, there
needs to be discipline there. Not just to kick them out because
we're better than them, to discipline them in hopes that the Lord would
bring them to repentance, to gain them as a brother and sister
in Christ. So again, not to say that we lord over anybody, anything,
but it is for their soul's reasoning that we do that. So we might
do that. Paul is saying that there were
false brethren. We have to have that understanding.
And if you've ever been in churches at any time, you're going to
find out there are false brethren among us. They claim to be Christ's,
but whenever the heat, the sun, whenever the Word of God is held
to, is being conveyed and held to,
then usually those people are fleeting. The doctrine is too
hard. The doctrine is too much. It's
unbelieved. So there are false Christians
that are out there. But it says that they were false
brethren brought in unawares, and we need to be careful. Take
heed that no man deceive you. Whenever somebody comes in, you
know, we don't just immediately just jump right up and say, hey,
all right, you're one of us. No, it takes a little time to
do that. We're very cautious about those things. We see what
they believe. We talk to them, visit with them,
and see what they say about scriptures and things like that. And we
try to politely and gently, with meekness and respect, deal with
things as they come up. And we've done that in the past.
You know, we've had some that's come and everything's been good
for a while. And then all of a sudden a couple
of topics will come up and they would just adamantly oppose what
we believe. And so we would try to gently
go in with respect in the scriptures, go and talk about that. But yet they found no place that
they would even want to discuss some of it. But so what do we
do? Well, what did Peter tell us
to do? If there are those that are among you that can't follow
the gospel, that can't believe the gospel, that can't understand,
handle, respect, love, whatever, if the gospel is something that
they can't, and they'd leave, he said, they went out from us
because they were not of us. If they were of us, they would
have remained with us and stayed with us. But they went out because
it showed they were not of us now. I'm paraphrasing that but
that's basically what it says So we have false Christians in
1 John chapter 4 in verse 1 We find out we'll look at a couple
things here and we'll We'll be done for the day because
there's some more false things not just people but actions that
we find in the scriptures 1 John chapter 4, in verse 1, we find
that the Scripture also says that there are counterfeit prophets. Counterfeit prophets. It says,
starting in verse 1, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false
prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit
of God. Every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every
spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist,
whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already
is it in the world. So here we see that there are
false prophets. Many false prophets are gone
out into the world. Counterfeit prophets. Now, I'm
not talking about fortune tellers. I'm not talking about people
seen in the future. Matter of fact, the majority
of the time, whenever the Bible speaks of prophets, especially
in the New Testament context, we find out that the term prophet
itself is talking about someone who foretells, not foretells,
but foretells. F-O-R-T-H, forth tells. They are telling, are bringing
forth the words of God. that he's calling the false prophet
a spirit. And whether that, you know, whenever
we say that there's a spirit of fear, that means that there
is kind of an air of fear, or there is a nuance of fear there,
okay? Well, whenever he's saying a
spirit, he's saying, do not believe every spirit. We can't see a
spirit, right? we're talking about this a thing
we can't see a spirit a spirit is non-corporeal it doesn't have
flesh and it doesn't move okay or it doesn't move about us in
in a body okay so we can't see a spirit but it says believe
not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God. So there are multiple spirits,
whatever he's talking about here. And then he says, because many
false prophets have gone out into the world hereby ye know
that the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus
Christ spirits confessing things. So a person confesses something
or a spirit that might be in them confesses something. Uh,
Controlling them or doing something that so I'll be honest. I don't
know the full meaning of what some of this is saying Here,
but I will say this that a false prophet speaks by a false spirit
with a false message and And so there is a counterfeit looming
here. That's what this is talking about.
And so he says here that every spirit that doesn't confess that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. Now, that's
dealing particularly with that. That isn't the only guideline,
brethren, for a false prophet either. Because there are many
false prophets that's out there that claim that Jesus came in
the flesh. Because it says here, every spirit
that confesses not, then it goes down and says, Hereby we know that you're the
spirit of God every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is of God now that almost kind of seems like
it's contradictory to what we see today a lot of these False preachers on TV they they
claim that Jesus came in the flesh and But you know, a lot of them believe
that he was only flesh. A lot of them preach that he
was less than God. And I think this is saying that
they got to believe that Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of
God, being God, is of God. This is God's sin. This is God
man. This is God in the flesh. And a lot of those false preachers,
they believe that Jesus came and that he was sub God while
he was here. Matter of fact, I've heard that
growing up. that, uh, that, uh, and not necessarily,
you know, from my church or anything like that, that I grew up in.
But growing up, I hear people all the time saying that, you
know, whenever Jesus came as man, he laid aside his deity
and came and lived here just as man. Now he was both God and
man, but he laid aside the God part to come here. And then he
picked it back up when he went back home. Okay. Now, he never
laid down that he was always the God-man. Of course, we've
talked about that extensively here. And you know what? I teach
about that and believe that the scriptures confirm that Jesus
is the God-man, the eternal God-man. There's never been a time that
the Son of God has ever been not both the mediator between
God and man, being the God-man. And so we find him there, and
I believe that we need to be careful, because anybody that
definitely preaches that Jesus was not God, and there are many
out there that believe that. What was the group? Was it the
Gnostics that didn't believe that Jesus had come in the flesh?
And then there are even those that are here today, you know,
that believe that whenever Jesus died, he just was a spirit and,
you know, all this kind of stuff. So, you know, there's that there,
but be warned that there are prophets out there that are false
or counterfeit prophets. So take heed that you be not
deceived. And, and alongside of that, and probably akin to
that is what Peter tells us in one, uh, in second Peter chapter
two and verse one, um, 2nd Peter chapter 2. It says, but there were false
prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false
teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies,
even denying the Lord that bought them, and bringing upon themselves
swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious
ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken
of. and we can go on about what all they talk about there. But
here we see that the Bible warns us that there will be false teachers
among us. Now remember, Peter was writing
this to believers, the elect, scattered. So he's not saying
that there's going to be false teachers in the world. He's saying
there are going to be false teachers among you, the elect of God,
and the places where you gather. They're going to be false brethren,
false prophets, false teachers, false gospels. All these things
are going to come up and you need to take heed that you be
not deceived. So I think those are some warnings
to us to watch out that everything, that just because it says Jesus,
just because it says Christian, just because it says Christ or
God or has a cross on it or whatever, That doesn't mean it's necessarily
true. Listen, our bookstores are full of false gospel. Just packed full of false gospel. And so let's take heed there. Now we're going to stop right
there. Anybody got anything you want to add to that or anything you want
to say? that has joined the metaphysical
movement and made Christ a metaphysical spirit and not a physical person
in the flesh. That's interesting. I didn't
know that the Unity actually believed that. Anybody else got anything? All right. Well, next week, we're
going to look at there are counterfeit actions that we can do counterfeit
things, not necessarily people, but counterfeit things. And so
we'll pick up Lord willing with that.